Top 20 Evils You’re Responsible For By Believing the Book of Mormon

John Hamer, a Community of Christ pastor and cartographer, recently went on John Dehlin’s podcast Mormon Stories and made the following observation:

It’s not only that it’s academically impossible to justify arguing that the Book of Mormon is an ancient text, it’s actually an ongoing contribution to the injustice, the racism, imperialism, and genocide that my [European] ancestors hoisted upon indigenous people in the [western] hemisphere.

Mormon Stories Episode #1063: The Book of Mormon’s 19th Century Context, Part 3.

Hamer, of course, is uniquely qualified to speak authoritatively on what is and isn’t academically possible when it comes to discussing Book of Mormon historicity in light of his extensive and penetrating academic publications on this subject.1 So we can confidently accept this point with no disputation. What’s odd, however, is how understated Hamer’s comment is.

I mean, sure, everybody knows that accepting the authenticity of the Book of Mormon makes you a genocidal racist. (This includes, naturally, Elder Larry Echo Hawk, those employees at Book of Mormon Central of Latin American and indigenous ancestry, and the scores of faithful Latin American Latter-day Saints who believe the Book of Mormon.) But I’m curious why Hamer left out all the other ways in which believing the Book of Mormon makes you a morally repugnant human cockroach. After all, I was always under the impression that it was common knowledge that believing in a historically-authentic Book of Mormon made you morally culpable for the following:

The Crusades

The Black Plague

The Spanish Inquisition

The Holocaust

9/11

The Rwandan genocide

The Trans-Atlantic slave trade

The Spanish Flu pandemic

The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Mỹ Lai Massacre

The eruption of Vesuvius

The Challenger explosion

The Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappearance

The Heaven’s Gate mass-suicide

Smallpox

Human sex trafficking

The AIDS epidemic

Pediatric cancer

Stalin’s Forced Famine in the Ukraine

The success of Nickelback

Well, I am sure that the indefatigable sleuth John Hamer will correct this oversight in his forthcoming book How Believing the Book of Mormon Literally Makes You Hitler, which I hear is going to become the definitive source on explaining how believing in ancient Nephites intrinsically compromises any worth you once had as a human being, justifies your banishment from decent society, and irrevocably casts you as a subhuman Nazi-Klansman-human sex trafficker-Nickelback enthusiast.2

[Citation Needed]

Before wrapping things up I must admit my envy of Hamer. To have such an abundance of white privilege that you can get away with casually accusing several million Latin American Latter-day Saints of being complicit in the genocide of their own race for simply believing a religious book is quite something.

19 thoughts on “Top 20 Evils You’re Responsible For By Believing the Book of Mormon”

You shall know them by their fruits. The level of discourse reflected in this post is an embarrassment to (Book of) Mormon studies, exhibiting all the control, equanimity, and generosity of a sandbox argument

That is exactly what he is saying. Hamer claims (A) that the very act of arguing that the Book of Mormon is an ancient text is an “ongoing contribution to the injustice, the racism, imperialism, and genocide that my [European] ancestors hoisted upon indigenous people in the [western] hemisphere.” Thus, (B) anyone who believes, teaches, and argues for a historical Book of Mormon is contributing to injustice, racism, imperialism, and genocide. Believers, including millions of Native American descendents, do exactly that. By doing so, (C) they are genocidal racists, since people who contribute to racism are racists, and people who contribute to genocide are genocidal.

Claim A implies claim B, and claim B implies claim C. Stephen is correctly pointing out that claim A implies claim C. Hamer’s claim and line of reasoning are ridiculous and lead to ridiculous ideas.

I’m confused, Ryan. You see, in the third part of the interview, at 36:45 in the video, Mr. Hamer says: “It’s not only that it’s academically impossible to justify arguing the Book of Mormon is an ancient text, it’s actually ongoing and contributing to the ongoing injustice, racism, imperialism, genocide, that has my ancestors have foisted upon indigenous people in the hemisphere.”

Do you deny that Mr. Hamer said these words? That “arguing the Book of Mormon is an ancient text [is] actually contributing to the ongoing injustice, racism, imperialism, genocide” of white Europeans?

So if I’m “contributing” to “racism” and “genocide” because I am arguing for an ancient Book of Mormon, what does that make me exactly per the straightforward meaning of Mr. Hamer’s words?

And as a matter of fact, I have heard Mr. Hamer give the exact same presentation before with the exact same slides and the exact same talking points. Back in 2017 when I visited his downtown Toronto CoC church building. My cousin was in attendance with me at the time. So I understand perfectly well what Mr. Hamer is claiming in this interview.

The distinction may be lost upon you, but to say that dogmatic belief in the Book of Mormon as an ancient text is “actually an ongoing contribution to the injustice, the racism, imperialism, and genocide that my [European] ancestors hoisted upon indigenous people in the [western] hemisphere” is not anywhere near the same thing as saying that someone is a “genocidal racist”. Words matter here, and the two constructions mean entirely different things. The phrase an “ongoing contribution” does not specify the level of contribution or try to equate it to overt genocidal or racist actions. What you are doing here is twisting words to make Hamer say something he didn’t for your own rhetorical and ideological ends.

First, I don’t see Stephen’s comments as ‘bad fruit.’ I see them as an obvious application of sarcasm — justly offered to someone who has not studied nor understood the message. Mr. Hamer (and Dehlin) are ”throwing things at the wall” hoping something will stick in the minds of people who are struggling with a faith issue. Their (Dehlin/Hamer) purposes for doing this is to destroy any possibility that some who struggle will make an effort to look back in faith. I see no issue in responding in a way to expose the ‘plot.’

Hey, it’s a really good thing that Mark Meadows used Lynne Patton during Cohen’s hearing to show that Trump isn’t a racist because he hires a black person. I’m glad to see the same argument is being made here!

I mean…I’m not the white dude calling brown Mormons genocidal savages for actually believing their own religious text. That’s a level of White Savior-ness I could only hope to attain by listening to Mormon Stories and “heart”-reacting to David Bokovoy’s Facebook posts.

Yes, every modern day Mormon & Christian completely adheres to the teachings of religious genocide. The book of Revelation prepares us for the great day of wrath when Christ & his angels descend from the heavens to utterly destroy the wicked humans and throw their souls into an everlasting hell!

Now this is known as Holy Genocide on a world scale… oh yes racism, imperialism & injustice are all portrayed in the book of Revelation as well as found throughout the bible.

Now, I’m not terribly qualified in Mormon studies or anything like that, so I can’t argue from authority. But… Doesn’t owning land in America (or anywhere else that was colonized and you didn’t buy the land from an indigenous resident at a fair price) constitute a far greater acceptance of genocide than believing in the Book of Mormon? Just sayin…

Sounds legit. Seems like the claim of a historically accurate Book of Mormon is much closer to an “absurd assertion worthy only of mockery” than Hamer’s comment, given the known archaeological record. Smoot and Co. will need to work harder than this if that characterization is the best that they can do.

Presumably Mr. Hamer regularly receives some sort of monetary remuneration as a minister of the Community of Christ. I would seriously doubt that he he has given or plans to give many sermons on 2nd Kings 5, Micah 3, 1st Timothy 3, or 1st Peter 5:2. I would further surmise that he gives little attention to Ezekiel 37: 15-20, Isaiah 29, John 10: 16, or Revelation 14: 6-7.